The invention relates to a folding method for empty disposable packages, e.g. milk cartons allowing reuse collection in suitable physical standards, and a device for the purpose.
Transition to use of standardized disposable packages has developed strongly in modem time and contributed to a well arranged flow of goods from the producer through the trade links to the consumer. The producers have achieved a very rational production process; storage and transport are based on a consistent standardization of the physical measures of trade and consumer units, simultaneously, requirements to hygienics can be taken care of in a controllable way. The distribution channels have derived great advantages through this transition to standardized disposable package, and it is difficult to imagine a reversed development, even if, from a social point of view, valuable material is occupied which, after one time""s use, has ended its function when surrounding the primary product for a relatively short period.
Such disposable packages have to an increasing degree flooded the consumer society, and given us a waste problem of large dimensions. The waste has simultaneously assumed a constantly more superior form, as highly developed products having a high raw material value and maybe large volume, after a short time""s use as package, nevertheless will represent a problem, even if the individual components thereof are in fact a raw material resource.
In order to define such a used package resource as such, it is decisive to separate therefrom other waste and other raw materials. All waste recovery is, in principle, based on separation, thus removing the individual components from the collected mass in a secure and cheap way, preferably without hired labour.
On account of the foregoing, the term xe2x80x9csource sortingxe2x80x9d has arose; it is important that the consumer himself/ herself makes the separation of the individual components valuable enough to take care of, as seen from the society""s point of view and, likewise, that the society organizes and takes the necessary steps for collection and reuse of the sorted out raw materials, so that a sensible cooperation between consumer, who takes care of the sorting work, and the society, seeing the utilitarian value.
By means of pledging arrangements and automatic receipt, standard bottles are recovered through the same trade links as those selling the products in the first instance. other glass of non-standard quality is collected in container systems. Accumulator batteries containing environmental poison are assigned their own arrangements, etc. Normal household waste is today sorted by consumer into two or three fractions, of which clean paper for reuse has become the largest variant. Some places, clean organic waste is sorted from the collected waste for municipal compost heaps. Remaining garbage is characterized as rubbish, and is buried on municipal refuse dumps.
In this last rubbish fraction are found, e.g. both high grade aluminum cans as well as plastics of very mixed origins having various chemical properties. Additionally, a consumer normally transfers also all kinds of juice and milk cartons to this rubbish fraction.
Juice cartons may have the same measures as milk cartons, but may also have very different external measures. Moreover, such cartons are internally foliated with aluminum, which becomes a disturbing factor upon reuse. It is, however, not excluded that the present method, taking a long view, also may be used in connection with such juice cartons.
Standard milk cartons are made from virgin, non-recirculated wooden fibres of very high quality. The mass price for such fibres are among the very highest paid prices in the market thereof.
These cartons having exactly the same standard measures, are coated with plastic both internally and externally in order to give the milk the protection required to maintain taste and hygienics, and they are, therefore, a very high grade, but expensive package, as seen relatively.
Much work has been carried out in order to achieve a satisfactory return arrangement for these milk cartons, both because of the value they actually represent, but also because the volume constitutes a large part of the waste and increases the need for refuse dumps and the care thereof.
Return arrangements have i.a. failed on the account of cleaning the milk cartons through rinsing which can not be expected to be carried out satisfactorily. The main reason, however, is that up to now there has not been available technology on the market to separate the approximately 12% of plastics coating the external side faces of the carton, from the cardboard material of the carton.
The present folding method enables collection for reuse purpose in suitable physical standards of e.g. milk cartons in that the invention relates to a manual special folding device.
Now, in Norway, refined and expensive U.S. technology has been installed. Through an advanced process the foregoing object is achieved, not only resulting in that clean cardboard fibres are separated out, but also in that the plastics used, having as high a burning value as petrol, become separated out and may be used to drive the process.
Today, this technology requires large plants in order to obtain a sensible economy, but the likelihood of reducing the size of these plants is large.
There has been initiated smaller collection campaigns for milk cartons, i.a. in the Oslo region and in Rogaland, and the possibilities for reuse seen gradually to be revealed in our country also.
On the European continent, approximately 800,000 tons of milk and juice cartons constitute the annual tonnage which up to now has been buried on refuse dumps.
In Rogaland, the annual production is approximately 45 million milk cartons, each weighing 28 grams.
For the whole country, the production of the dairies is somewhere between 700 and 800 million units or approximately 22,400 tons.
From the patent literature, i.a. the following is known:
U.S. Pat. No. 2,800,160 discloses a device for clamping together empty tins and the like. The deforming compression is achieved by means of a hinged and rotary face which is clamped against a fixed support, thus reducing the volume of the tins, but the clamped body has no standard shape suited for any kind of joining or stacking.
Likewise, the U.S. patent specification discloses a more assembled device which, with a pivotal pressing face against a fixed support, upon a first pressing operation folds the tin and, thereafter, by turning the folded tin right-angled, compresses the tin with a new pressing operation, but the compressed body has no standard shape suited for stacking or other joining of a plurality of such bodies.
EP 0 089 399 discloses a manual press for use in the making of a briquette-shaped fuel material of primarily moistened newspaper, disposed in a box-shaped body having a corresponding face subjected to manual compression by means of a pivotal pressing arm. Obviously, the purpose is not to fold or press or clamp together disposable package to any form of standard units.
The present folding method enables collection for reuse purpose in suitable physical standards of e.g. milk cartons in that the invention relates to a manual special folding device.